San Diego agreed this week to pay $3.4 million to more than 700 city firefighters to compensate them for underpaid overtime they should have received several years ago.
The payout comes six months after the city reached a similar legal settlement with more than 2,300 other city workers for the same kind of underpaid overtime.
The cases were handled separately because overtime calculations differ for firefighters, who work 24-hour shifts that include sleeping overnight in firehouses.
The City Council Tuesday unanimously approved the new firefighter settlement, which covers three-quarters of the city’s 943 firefighters.
The payouts aren’t expected to have a significant impact on the budget crisis San Diego is facing during the pandemic. The city expected to owe large payouts in the underpaid overtime cases, so money was set aside before the budget crisis.